A lost photograph and a clue to a vanished building

Sometimes you fall across a picture by chance which fills in a gap in your knowledge and at the same time is a joy to look at in its own right.


It is also unusual in that it is not one I have seen before and I doubt that at first glance many today would be able to place it.

 It is a postcard sent in the summer of 1905 and shows that section of Barlow Moor Road running north from the junction with Wilbraham Road towards what would now be the library.

There is little that is familiar. But perhaps the first clue is the building of John Bailey, joiner and cabinet maker. It is still there today but is now the solicitor on the corner of Barlow Moor and Warwick Road. 

Adjoining the building and further down Barlow Moor Road there are other buildings which are still there today albeit with some changes.

All of which leaves the two buildings beside Bailey’s the joiner behind the chap leaning on the fence. The white building set back is the old Royal Oak which had been selling beer from early in the 19th century.

It was here in the 1860s that drunken mobs from Manchester had to be chased off by locals and earlier still the scene of a pub theft which resulted in the convicted thief being transported.

But it is the building to the right of the Royal Oak which really caught my attention. This is Renshaws Buildings owned by a local farmer who lived on the Row.* It dates from the very early 1830s and maybe even older.

It was one of a number of properties built for rent by local businessmen like Renshaw the farmer, Brownhill the wheelwright and Grantham the tailor.

They may have been the first wave of new brick built cottages, replacing the old wattle and daub properties and aimed at the increase in population in the township.

These were for the local market and the census returns show that they were inhabited by farm labourers and tradesmen.

I cannot be sure of when Renshaws Buildings went up but we can be sure they were in place by 1832 because their ownership along with other properties guaranteed Renshaw a property vote after the 1832 Reform Act

Looking at the number of units in Renshaws Buildings and the number of families recorded in the census record they have been one up one down dwellings in a block running at right angles to the main road.

The picture may also be unique in that it could be the last time it was photographed like this.

Within perhaps ten years the front had been converted into a garage and by the late 1920s had been demolished to make way for the new Royal Oak.

Today the only evidence that it was ever there is the kerb running down the south side of the pub.

So there you have it, this postcard from 1905 remains one of the best images of Renshaws Buildings, a building which I have followed from its construction sometime before 1832.

*Chorlton Row is now Beech Road

Picture; Renshaws Buildings and the Royal Oak circa 1905, from the Lloyd Collection

The wrath of the Jelly Men …….. comic terrors no.1 …… 1960

In truth I wasn’t frightened of the Jelly Men ….. more just fascinated.

They appeared one day in the Beezer sometime in 1960 as an invading force.

They came out of the sea and had the power to trap people, animals, vehicles and even buildings in giant bubbles which were blown from their tentacles.

Just where they originally came from, their real purpose and their eventual fate are now lost in time.

And here I have a confession which D.C Thompson who published the comic may well shudder at, but the Beezer and its comic pal the Topper were not my first choice. 

That fell to the Beano and Dandy, and years later when our own children came along, our Ben got the Beano and Josh the Dandy.

Almost thirty-nine years later Ben still gets the Beano annual in his Christmas stocking.

And as I am in to confession in that great league table of comics I have to admit that the Eagle triumphed over all of them.

But this is about the Jelly Men and the heroic struggle by a group of school children to defeat them, and what a titanic struggle it became.

The Beezer reported that “Edinburgh! London! North, South, East, West – Britain is overrun by The Jelly Men”, filling the page with images of a television broadcaster describing scenes of horror as they wade ashore in Scotland, are fished up by trawler men, derail trains and imprison news vendors, as well as soldiers guarding Buckingham Palace, and interrupting a football match by encasing the goalkeeper in a bubble. 

I should have spotted the clue in a trailer the comic ran on January 22nd, which took the reader deep into the ocean,  offering up that “There are few places on this Earth where Man has not set foot. 

The highest mountain, the deepest jungle and the frozen wasteland.  

All have been explored, their mysteries laid bare.  But one area remains unconquered.  

It is the mysterious floor of the World’s deepest oceans. 

Wearing special diving suits man has invaded the home of the shark, the swordfish and lower still the giant ray. 

In enormously strong steel chambers, he has penetrated even farther into the bark depths.  But beyond in the inky blackness undisturbed for centuries who know what form of life may exist.  Perhaps strange creatures like THE JELLY MEN?”

So I now know what happened to them but as yet not their fate.

But here the kind archivist at D.C Thompson may take pity and trawl the old copies of the Beezer for the answer.

He was kind enough to help me get permission to use images of The Jelly Men and I rather think on a cold December day he might enjoy finding out for me.

That said the strip first appeared in 1960, ran to five series of which the fourth in 1985 was a reprint.*

Location; Britain in 1960

Pictures; The Jelly Men, 1960, courtesy of DC Thomson & Co Ltd"

* List of Beezer comic strips, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Beezer_comic_strips

Home thoughts from abroad nu 3 ................. lost in the woods in the summer of 1964

An occasional series on what I miss about the place where I grew up.*

Now I say lost but that would not be strictly true but thinking back to that summer of 1964 I might as well have been.

This was the first summer after we had moved to Well Hall from Peckham and it was magic.

After all how could it be other wise?

True there were parks in Peckham and neighbouring New Cross but the woods above Well Hall were something different.

For a start they were big, stretching all the way to that unknown place called Welling, offered great views down across Eltham and Woolwich but above all were just somewhere to wander.

And as the next few years rolled by and I was faced with yet another broken romance, walking alone in the woods got me out and pushed away that feeling of teenage melancholy.  
.
I was too old to see the woods as an adventure playground but they were still a place of fascination.

We went back recently took the old familiar routes up to the Castle looked down towards Eltham Park and then headed across to Shooters Hill Road and the Red Lion.

Of course back in 1964 the pub would not have featured over much on my journeys, but a little over three years later the Welcome Inn would be a fine finishing point to a long wander through the woods.

None of us were 18 but we looked it and that was enough.

And it was here sometime around then that I got to watch one of those first colour transmissions of a tennis game on TV.

It’s hard now to think all we watched was in black and white and I have to say that afternoon in the Welcome was a revelation.

Today of course we take it for granted, the welcome has gone and I seldom walk the woods.

Location; Oxleas Woods, Eltham

Pictures; the Woods, 1976 courtesy of Jean Gammons, and looking down, 2015 from the collection of Ryan Ginn

*Home thoughts from abroad, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Home%20thoughts%20from%20abroad

How we lived ……………. catching a bus ...... just a quarter of a century ago

Once again, I am looking at a bit of history which for many of us won’t seem like history ………. just a little before now.

And I make no excuses that this appears to be nothing more than a story about a bus timetable, because lurking behind “Your Handy Guide” there is much more, all of which is revealed in the introduction which welcomed travelers “to the first edition of this new handy timetable booklet covering all GM Buses services in the Chorlton area.

Since deregulation of the bus services in October 1986 there have been numerous changes to bus services with the tendering process leading to some routes changing between operators or possibly being run by more than one operator depending on the time of day or day of the week”.

And that gets to the heart of this little bit of history, because before bus deregulation we were served by one operator covering the whole of Greater Manchester and before that by city and district services administered by local authorities.

The creation of an elected authority for Greater Manchester was matched by an amalgamation of all the existing bus providers into SELNEC, or South East Lancashire North East Cheshire, which morphed into Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive.

Its demise at the hands of a Conservative Government lead to a plethora of independent bus companies which ran for profit and focused on the routes which offered the most in passengers.

So, the student route along Oxford Road past the university and on through Rusholme, Fallowfield, Withington and Didsbury was awash with buses.

But now we have the expansion of the B Network with the control of key elements of public transport back in the hands of muncipal direction.  Promising an integrated, cheaper and more coherent service. 

And the buses are painted yellow. I like yellow.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; “Your Handy Guide”, GM buses, 1992

A family of seven in a two roomed cottage on the Row, ........ one up one downs part 1

It is hard today to imagine bringing up a family in just two rooms and yet many people here in the township during the 19th century and before did just that.

These were houses with just two rooms often with only a ladder to give access to the upstairs room, and they were common enough across the country both in our towns and cities but also in the countryside.

Only three still exist in Manchester and these are on Bradley Street backing on to far grander buildings on Lever Street.

We had our fair share but they have all been demolished and the evidence is scanty.

One survived on the edge of Chorlton on Maitland Road into the 1930s  but those which would have been here in the centre of the township along the Row and around the green vanished a long time ago.

 Most would have been wattle and daub cottages and while we still had something like fifty in the 1840s all went during the next half century with the last on the corner of Beech Road and Wilton being pulled down in 1892.

Now it is possible using old photographs, OS maps and census returns to locate them on what are now Beech Road and the green.

There were a group of them on the northern side of Beech Road almost opposite Reynard Road, a solitary example opposite the parish church close to what is now the car park for the meadows and more on Sandy Lane and there will be more in Martledge and Hardy.

These were all brick built and most survived into the 20th century and back in the 1830s and 40s were owned by local landowners, businessmen, traders and farmers.

At present we know most about those on Beech Road. They were owned by James Holt who had made his money in Manchester and retired to Chorlton to live in Beech House sometime around the mid 1830s. In the May of 1845 he was renting them out to John Hooley, John Whitehead and James Whitby and the rents ran from just under 4/- down to 3/4d. John Hooley was a joiner and Whitehead an agricultural labourer.

Trying to make sense of what proportion of their wages was paid in rent is difficult. But an agricultural labourer in Lancashire might earn between 11s and 18s. But these varied, and so in the most intense period in the summer months this could rise to 13s and fall later in the year to 12s or less.

Likewise women and children were better paid during the warm busy months. It is also worth noting that women’s wages in parts of Lancashire were the highest in the country. Added to this there was the money that could be earned at harvest time, and from task work and activities like drainage work.

Now overcrowding was a common feature of rural life and the Whitehead’s had five children ranging in age from 12 down to six months with the added complication that of the five one was a boy aged 12 and the rest were girls.

Families fell back on different strategies to cope, with some farming out some of the children to a grandparent or making arrangements with neighbours where by the girls of the two families slept under one roof, and the boys under another. In other cases they just relied on the blanket across the room. All of which allowed moralists and social observers a field day and was reported in great detail by Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of Women & Children in Agriculture in 1843.

The cottages on Beech Road were demolished sometime around 1911, but those on Sandy Lane and the one opposite the parish church lasted much longer, but more about those later.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection, circa 1895

A bus for every occasion .......

The Museum of Transport on Queens Road really does have a bus for every occasion as well as offering examples from all over Greater Manchester, along with "coaches, trams, objects and displays".

Here can be found the Corpi red of Manchester, the green livery of Salford, as well as blue buses, mauve, and of course that odd coloured offering from what was SENEC.

Nor is that all, because  there is a fire engine, a horse drawn vehicle and the opportunity to sit inside a number of those old rear entry buses which those of us of a certain generation remember with affection.

And while those old style buses allowed you to hop on and off and even to chase after them with a view to jumping aboard, they were not user friendly to the disabled and out of reach to anyone using a wheel chair.

Upstairs volunteers are working on the records of the old companies transferring the lists of employees from hard paper to digital which in time will be available to those wanting to study the history of Greater Manchester.

I had never been before and it was a revelation made all the more memorable by the premises which dates back to 1930s and was originally part of the bus garage, which was later used by the G.P.O to service their vans and lorries, before becoming a museum.

It is open on Wednesdays and weekends and attracts a wide range of visitors, from school parties to crinklies like me.

Location; The Museum of Transport on Queens Road

Pictures; wot I saw on my trip to the museum, 2024, from  collection of Andrew Simpson

*Museum of Transport Greater Manchester,  https://motgm.uk/ 

Passing Burton's on Well Hall Road to the sound of Betty Everitt and Judy Street

Now I have fond memories of the old Burton’s at the top of Well Hall Road.

It was here that I bought my first suit, more than a few shirts and the odd tie, although I do confess it ran a poor second to Harry Fenton's and even Payne's on the High Street.

Of course there will be those with equally happy stories to tell of the dances that were held upstairs.

Not that I ever went.

During the mid 60s I still commuted back to New Cross for school and so had yet to find friends in Eltham and by the time I started at Crown Woods in 1966 there were plenty of other places to go with the shed load of new people I had met.

That said on the long walks back from Grove Park after an evening with Ann I did sometime pass the dance hall after one of the more rowdy evenings.

And that is a shame because it will have been there that I guess I would have herd live versions of Betty Everitt’s  Getting Mighty Crowded* and Judy Street’s What.**

It would be years later in Manchester at the Twisted Wheel and later still at Placemate that I would fully come to appreciate these songs.

And I still have a fond spot for the opening lines of Getting Mighty Crowded, with its message of losing a lover ........................

“I'm packing up my memories
And I'm gonna move
On out of your heart

Turning in my keys
And I'm gonna move
On out of your heart

Cause there ain't
Room enough for two
And sharing your heart
With someone new
Will never do"

At which point I suppose I should launch into the story of Burton’s which replaced the Congregational Church and was itself supplanted by a Big Mac.

But I won’t instead I shall go off and listen to Betty Everitt who sadly is no longer with us and Judy Street who still is.

Picture; looking west down the High Street, 2014, from the collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitzpatrick & Jean Gammons, 2013

* Getting Mighty Crowded, Betty Everitt, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AmwoK6uw5Q


** What, Judy Street, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2NySUcbv3w